Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Windows Vista All in One

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was thinking of giving this just three stars, but after using Vista for a month, the book does seem to be complete and fairly accurate, so I didn't want to ding it too badly.

Now for the bad part. For one, the book is way too big at 750 pages. As someone with a good knowledge of XP and a few days poking around in Vista before I started the book, the "hey, I didn't know that" moments were few and far between. But even for a book aimed at novices this one is too bloated. Just one example, though there are plenty more - most of p. 492 describes six categories of non-system programs. The categories seem to be of the authors making and there's no indication that they are of any practical value, and certainly not when using Vista.

The other issue, minor and understandable but annoying nonetheless is the relentless promoting of Vista. Discussing Media Player, a third of the way through the book, the author says "at the risk of letting this turn into something that sounds like a Microsoft-paid commercial". In my mind it had reached that point on page 1 with the sentence, "Windows Vista is cool." It continued on page after page. I realize this book wasn't intended to be either an exposé or a dry college textbook, and that badmouthing Vista would hardly help the authors book sales, but a little detachment would be nice.

The author's contention (highly suspect to begin with) that the book is designed for users from beginner to advanced doesn't hold up. For a novice user, this is probably a good book. The advanced user should be prepared to wade through 735 pages of dross for their 15 pages of gold.

Windows Vista Operating System is fraught with errors and inconsistancies and this book is a real help in navigating the system if you must move to Vista. I have purchased five Vista books from Amazon all of which have varying views and depths of coverage of various Vista functions and have found multiple sources to be almost necessary if you expect to administer the system and use common functions. This book has good detail in most examples and has broad coverage but does not cover some basic functions to sufficient depth for someone new to the Vista OS. In fairness, none of the other books I purchased are as complete as needed either.

Very good seller service and price. The book is the best I have read on Vista and is a pleasure to read.

The book is the best for learning the changes in Office, I bought it to help me learn about the new functions with Excel but after reading the book you will gain a new appreciation of Office 2007. Great Book!!!!

This book is excellent, refreshed plenty of tricks and made tasks very easy to go through.

For those who have installed the MS Office 2007 but are accustomed to Office 2003 and wonder what happened, this is the book. It's clearly written and eazy to understand.